The following primary accounts are either taken from a survivor's
own letters or diaries, or testimony at either the US or British
Inquiries of 1912. In these cases, there is very little doubt that
the survivor really said what they are quoted as saying.

Since many survivors gave multiple accounts, some secondary
accounts may be mixed in with the primary, in an effort to keep a
person's statements together.

Eugene Patrick Daly of Athlone, Ireland, by his own accounts was
rescued aboard the upturned Collapsible B. His accounts of his
rescue are partially born out by fellow steerage passenger Edward
Dorking, who mentioned seeing the "Irishman" struggling to climb
off of Collapsible B and into one of the lifeboats which were
taking the men aboard in the morning. By the time Daly reached the
Carpathia, he had been rendered unconscious by the below-freezing
sea water which he had been half submerged in all night. After
being taken aboard the Carpathia, he was carried to the cabin of
Dr. Frank Blackmarr. Upon awakening, Daly told of his experiences
aboard the Titanic. As he spoke, Blackmarr wrote down Daly's story
in his personal scrapbook. Daly said:

"After the accident, we were all held down
in steerage. Finally, some of the women and children were let
up, but we had quite a number of hot-headed Italians and other
peoples who got crazy and made for the stairs. These men tried
to rush the stairway, pushing and crowding and pulling the women
down. Some of them with weapons in their hands. I saw two dagos
shot and some that took punishment from the officers."

He continues: "I finally got up to the top
deck and made for the front. The water was just covering the
upper deck at the bridge and it was easy to slide because she
had such a tip. I reached a collapsible boat that was fastened
to the deck by two rings. It could not be moved. During that
brief time that I worked on cutting one of those ropes, the
collapsible was crowded with people hanging upon the edges. The
Titanic gave a lurch downward and we were in the water up to our
hips. She rose again slightly, and I succeeded in cutting the
second rope which held her stern. Another lurch threw this boat
and myself off and away from the ship into the water."

Daly refers to no suicide in this letter, and it is unclear as to
whether the shooting he refers to (the "dagos") occurred down in
the third class areas, or up on the Boat Deck. Although this
letter as transcribed by Dr. Blackmarr only mentions the two men
being shot, and no suicide, apparently Daly did tell Blackmarr
about the officer killing himself. In an interview given on page 3
of the April 20, 1912 edition of the Chicago Daily
Tribune, Blackmarr wrote of this:

"The only panic at the beginning, as I
understand it, was in the steerage, where there were many
persons who lacked self-control. There was no shooting, as I
learn, except that a steerage passenger told me he saw an
officer trying to control the maddened rush by shooting two
persons. The same officer shot himself a minute later."

The following is an excerpt from a letter that Daly wrote to his
younger sister Maggie Daly in Ireland. The letter is undated, but
was apparently written sometime between April 18-April 21, 1912
(this account was originally published in The Night Lives
On by Walter Lord):

"At the first cabin (deck) when a boat was
being lowered an officer pointed a revolver and said if any man
tried to getin, he would shoot him on the spot. I saw the
officer shoot two men dead because they tried to get in the
boat. Afterwards there was another shot, and I saw the officer
himself lying on the deck. They told me he shot himself, but I
did not see him. I was up to my knees in the water at the time.
Everyone was rushing around, and there were no more boats. I
then dived overboard." (Daly's letter would later be
published in the papers of his hometown Athlone, as well as the
May 4, 1912 issues of the London Daily Telegraph
and The Daily Sketch. A very similar account was
told to Mayor Gaynor of New York when Daly visited his home for
the mayor's relief fund, and was printed in the April 22, 1912
edition of the Washington Post)

Daly's letter to his sister contains details not mentioned in his
April 15th account - namely, the officer shooting two men dead,
before shooting himself. However, he apparently did mention these
to Blackmarr, as evidenced by the doctor's press interview.

Daly also testified under oath about the shooting/suicide in the
1915 limitation hearings. He was the only individual to mention
this at these hearings.

(For the full text of the letter transcribed by Dr. Blackmarr, click here)

Miss Francatelli gave the following story in a letter to someone
named "Marion" on April 18, 1912 (portions of this letter appeared
in James Cameron's Titanic by Ed Marsh, and Titanic:
Women and Children First by Judith B. Geller)

The wording of Miss Francatelli's letter makes it difficult to
tell whether she was referring to the ship sinking, or to the
officer shooting himself when she says that she "saw the whole
thing." She may have just been repeating what she heard from
someone else, regarding the suicide. If she was actually claiming
to have seen the suicide, her account is problematic for several
reasons. First of all, Miss Francatelli was rescued in lifeboat #1
along with eleven others. In all of the "reliable" accounts of the
suicide, it takes place during the launching of collapsible A, a
full hour after lifeboat #1 was launched. Secondly, it is very
unlikely that Miss Francatelli could have seen a suicide from a
lifeboat 200 yards from the ship.

The following is an excerpt from an unpublished letter to his wife
in France, dated April 19, 1912 (excerpts of this letter appeared
in The Night Lives On by Walter Lord). It is
translated from French:

"While the last boat was leaving, I saw an
officer with a revolver fire a shot and kill a man who was
trying to climb into it. As there remained nothing more to do,
the officer told us, "Gentlemen, each man for himself,
good-bye." He gave a military salute and then fired a bullet
into his head. Thatís what I call a man!!!"

(For the full text of Rheims letter, click
here. This appears to be a different translation from what
Lord had available; however, the meaning is essentially the same.)

The following is taken from the April 20, 1912 edition of the New
York Herald, given the same day as the letter to his
sister. Here are the relevant sections of the article, which
was under the headline of "Officer Kills Man, Ends Own Life":

"George Rheims, an importer, of No. 19 East
Fifty-seventh street, Manhattan, and No. 22 Rue Octave
Feuilliet, Paris, who assisted in loading the lifeboats, said
yesterday he had seen an officer of the Titanic shoot a man who
attempted to get in a boat ahead of a woman. Mr. Rheims feet
were badly frozen.

"I was with my brother-in-law, Joseph Loring of No. 811 Fifth
Avenue," said Mr.Rheims. "The majority of men passengers did not
attempt to get in the boats. The men assisted the women. But
when the boats began to be lowered some men lost their heads.
From the lower deck men jumped into crowded boats and others
slid down ropes. One officer shot a man who attempted to get
into a crowded boat. Immediately afterward the officer said:-
"Well, goodby," and killed himself."

Rheims was able to swim to Collapsible A, and was one of the 12
survivors later rescued.

Williams was on the forward starboard Boat Deck as the bridge
dipped under. According to his personal account published in the
May 11th 1997 edition of Main Line Life
(excerpts of this also appeared in Paul Quinn's Dusk to
Dawn):

"I heard the crack of a revolver shot from
the direction where I had left Captain Smith. I did not look
around...The ship seemed to give a slight lurch. I turned
towards the bow. I saw nothing but water with just a mast
sticking out of it. I don't remember the shock of the cold
water, I only remember thinking, 'suction,' and my efforts to
swim in the direction of the starboard rail to get away from the
ship...Before I had swam more than ten feet I felt the deck come
up under me and I found we were high and dry. My father was not
more than 12 or 15 feet from me...He started towards me just as
I saw one of the four great funnels come crashing down on top of
him. Just for one instant I stood there transfixed-not because
it had only missed me by a few feet...curiously enough not
because it had killed my father for whom I had a far more than
normal feeling of love and attachment; but there I was
transfixed wondering at the enormous size of this funnel, still
belching smoke."

This account does seem to corroborate the timing as established by
Daly, Rheims, Dorking (see below), etc., even though Williams did
not actually see what happened. He was in the right position at
the right time to have heard something, and according to this
account, he did.